Multicast polling and efficient voip connections in ieee 802.16 networks

Abstract

IEEE 802.16 standard defines the wireless broadband access network technology called WiMAX which introduces several interesting advantages including its the support for quality of service (QoS) at the MAC layer. Its several features, such as multicast polling support the base station (BS) to provide the QoS guarantees for subscriber stations (SSs). The specification, however, does not define very exactly how this optional multicast polling technique should be used. We propose a way to use this feature on the base stations and also suggest an addition to the specification, to serve several different delay requirements. To test the proposed solution and the performance of the multicast polling in general, we have run several simulation scenarios in the NS-2 simulator. Voice over IP (VoIP) is considered as a specific application, since its tight delay requirements benefit most from the positive effect of multicast polling.